Join us to
hear Jack
speak!
You Can Believe it!
Inspiration
Meet Jack Andraka. A guy interested in
science stuff and somebody who really
wants you to believe in yourself.
Because if you do, you can do anything
'Dear Mr Andraka, I regret to inform you that your sensor proposed in the
attached procedure would in no capacity perform its intended function. The
idea of a carbon nanotube transistor would require such a massive amount of
resources that the end product would be prohibitively expensive, incredibly
delicate, and low in sensitivity and selectivity. Please consider trying a different
approach.'
So begins the memoir of one of the world’s brightest young scientists. With
a rejection letter. It’s one of almost 200 emails that Jack Andraka received after sending out a
professional request to hundreds of labs, trying to persuade scientists to let him run an experiment
that he had designed that could result in saving millions of lives. His proposal for a new pancreatic
cancer detector was 30 pages long, and he had spent four months devising a professional method,
materials list and budget in excruciating detail. Instead of the encouraging responses he expected,
his inbox slowly began to fill up with rejections; most were cold, automated responses, some were
gentle yet dismissive, and others antagonistic and condescending. But there seemed to be one
main problem the scientists had: Jack was only 15 at the time.
‘Rejections were so formative in the process of making my breakthrough,’ Jack tells me over the
phone from his home in Maryland in the United States. ‘I got 199 rejections from labs. But you
really need to stick behind your ideas and keep pushing. If you don’t believe in it, who will?’
Jack’s memoir, Breakthrough, details his childhood growing up with parents who were intent on
fostering their children’s creative energy and curiosity about the world. This childlike inquisitiveness
grew into full-blown experimental enthusiasm in Jack’s teenage years. He and his older brother, Luke,
took over the basement of their suburban home and converted it into mad scientist’s lair. Jack tells me
that one day, while Luke was refashioning an old microwave into a ray gun and Jack was supercharging
some particles to create plasma, all the lights suddenly flickered off. Confused in the darkness,
the two budding Dr Frankensteins emerged from the basement to discover they’d blown the whole
neighbourhood’s power supply.
‘We’ve had our fair share of crazy and disastrous experiments,’ Jack admits. Read on ...
Breakthrough:
How one teen
innovator is
changing the
world by Jack
Andraka is
published
by Scribe,
rrp $24.99.
Jack
Andraka
is touring
Australia in
August and
September.
SpineOut
has
organised for Jack to
appear in Sydney at
the following schools:
The King’s School
(Parramatta),
Brigidine College
(St Ives) and The Scots
College (Bellevue Hill)
in early September.
The event is free.
If you would like
to join us to meet
Jack and hear him
speak at any of these
events please contact
info@spineout.com.au